Category Archives: Deliberate Practice

By a Pyramid

Posted on January 28, 2021 by Sarah Sullivan

In December, when we went into a COVID related regional lockdown, I began a notebook for doing small imaginative sketches. I thought that since I could not get out for plein air painting, that at least I could learn a … Continue reading →

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Sunset in the Meadow

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Sarah Sullivan

When I look at the collection above of the plein air paintings that I did on our recent trip to Colorado, I notice that I am reluctant to include people in the landscapes and to use vivid accent colors. Since … Continue reading →

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Marigolds on Stripes

Posted on November 5, 2019 by Sarah Sullivan

I brought my marigolds inside and took my time arranging the composition. For color and shape contrast, I put the round orange flowers on a mostly blue striped tablecloth. Then I arranged the wrinkles in the stripes to counter the … Continue reading →

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Intuitive Painting

Posted on February 14, 2019 by Sarah Sullivan

I just finished a four-day workshop on intuitive painting with the Arizona artist, Stan Kurth. Above are three of my favorite paintings that I did during the workshop. We learned to develop paintings intuitively. Not from life, not from a … Continue reading →

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Quick Paintings and Quick Decisions

Posted on November 29, 2018 by Sarah Sullivan

I painted many 20-minutes sketches this morning of a model with the SDWS Thursday life group.  A twenty-minute sketch does not give a lot of time for planning, measuring, and color choice. You have to be fast and trust your … Continue reading →

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Frida Underwater

Posted on October 18, 2018 by Sarah Sullivan

This week the assignment in our illustration class was to show a character in an underwater environment, using black ink and traditional pens. I had trouble thinking of a character and began several sketches only to abandon them when I … Continue reading →

Posted in Deliberate Practice, Learning | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Do They Like My Work?

Posted on October 12, 2018 by Sarah Sullivan

I am taking a ten-week illustration course at a local university. Our first assignment was to select text from an unillustrated book and then to illustrate it using five types of pencil marks- hatching, crosshatching, scribbling, tick marks, and pressure … Continue reading →

Posted in Deliberate Practice, Telling a Story | Tagged | 6 Comments